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CHAPTER ONE – AIDEN

It was the perfect place to grow up as a kid Just a townhouse develop suburbs to ical

My mom and I always lived in aparty ones Run-down ones with ant problehbor probleht wefor this lawyer guy

(Yes, he did end up being my step-dad It was one of those sappy, ro prince hisks her off to theher a well-above-e job so she can make her own choices for once’ stories)

His name is Bob My dad, that is And he looks like a Bob He sounds like a Bob, he acts like a Bob and you knohat? What a fucking relief, right? Because in the city the guys ere interested in my mom were all called Chad, or Todd, or Snakes She literally dated a guy named Snakes

So Bob Edwards was a huge step up for her

Anyway… I’

I’ to think back to the day I reen space froical There was grass Like… lots of it And all the front doors of the townhouses faced each other across this expanse of greenery About thirty of them all lined up in a row on one side and the same number on the other side

Off to ht was a rock feature Like a big pile of boulders surrounded by water—not a lot of water, enough so you could jump from the shore to the nearest boulder and clamber your way up to the peak And there was a pu that made water trickle down the rocks In the pond there were tadpoles, and frogs, and one summer there was even a turtle

Maybe this isn’tyou, to a kid who had so far grown up with nothing but trashcans outside his front stoop, this was heaven In ht-year-old mind it felt like I’d been picked up and set down inside a whole neorld I don’t knohat ht now if I had stayed in the city Maybe I’d still be this guy, but probably not

So the nature was cool and all, but the best thing about living in those townhouses was the twins, Kali and Kyle Sae as me They’d lived there all their lives so I was so about how to survive in the woods for an afternoon, or build a fort, or how to catch and raise tadpoles on your back patio, or where the wild berries grew in the summer—and they took it upon themselves to teach me their sleepy, small-toays

The three of us were inseparable Ten minutes after the movers arrived I was enrolled in Kali and Kyle’s school of middle-class survival

So that’s where it started

I sigh and suddenly realize I’ve said all this out loud

I’y Everyone is crying Everyone but me I can’t even look at Kali because if I do I’ll lose it and I don’t want to lose it Not yet I have to keep my shit in check until I’m done because this is my only chance to pay Kyle the respect he deserves My last chance to honor him and let him kno much I loved him, how much I’ll one

I was gonna say, “And now this is where it ends” That sentence is written down on the piece of paper in front ofmyself to say it Because that cheats Kali out of what must come next

A life without her twin

It’s a life uniined, but et it, even if I can never fully get it

So I wing it I talk about hoe grew up, and Kyle went to business school, and I went to mechanic school, and Kali moved away to chef school And how Kyle and I opened up Rock Crawler Custom Jeeps and lived a life of testosterone-filled bliss for more than a decade

I don’t knohy I think everyone is interested in this shit, but I don’t care if they’re not I aood once